


when your head's resting next to mine

by icarusandtheson



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Rachel Lives, Family Dynamics, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-10-27 03:51:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20753891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarusandtheson/pseuds/icarusandtheson
Summary: Alex waits up for his husband while pretending to be doing anything else. Rachel keeps her son (and his son) company.





	when your head's resting next to mine

**Author's Note:**

> if you'd like to, this can be read as in the same universe as "to keep it all the year", a few years down the road.

The floorboards creak somewhere behind her, and Rachel pulls herself up and out of the almost-sleep she was sliding into. She rolls out a crick in her neck, grimacing. She should be in bed. Her days of staying up waiting on a man are long, long gone, the baby she paced the floor with grown. 

He still is, though -- hers. So she’s still awake, watching him pace the floor in slow circles.

“He’s asleep,” she tells Alex once he wanders back into her line of sight, like he doesn’t already know, like they don’t both know this excuse was already worn threadbare when he picked it up hours ago.

“Not deeply,” Alex says, which is a lie. The baby is the only one of them keeping to his schedule, which sounds about right. She never did figure out the right way to do things, the right order -- Alex takes after her, probably, in that like in so many other things. 

“Sit down, at least.” 

“I’m fine, Ma.” 

“You’re going to drop him if you’re not careful,” Rachel says, which is a lie, but it’s past one in the morning and Alex is still circling the room like he’s not sure he’s safe in it. He reminds her of herself, when she was his age, and she hates it with an acuteness that surprises her. 

Alex stiffens, hisses, _ “Ma,” _like she’s laid down bad luck just saying the words, but he comes to the couch, lowers himself onto it with the slow, careful movements of a new parent. Rachel wants to laugh at him, just a little, but if she wakes Lawrence up she won’t be able to convince Alex to settle down until sunrise. 

There’s a pause where they both hold themselves tight, waiting -- but Lawrence stays asleep, his face tucked against Alex’s chest. Rachel watches the rise and fall of his little body, watches the fall of Alex’s body as he sags against the couch with a small, relieved noise she knows he won’t admit to.

He had a little bear when he was small, soft but cheap -- everything cheap, then, what she wouldn’t give to take that guilty, frightened girl by the shoulders and show her this room, this house -- that he loved so much that it started to droop when he set it down, the stuffing gone or misdistributed. He looks like that, right now. Like a very tired toy. 

“Let me take him,” she says. “Your arms must be tired.”

“He’s not heavy.”

“He’s heavier than you were at this age, and I still remember the ache.”

“It’s fine.” Alex shifts, presses his son a little closer to his chest. 

Rachel snorts softly. “I’m not going to steal him from you, relax.”

Alex scowls at her, but then Lawrence moves in his sleep and his attention is gone again, vague worry etching his frown instead. Alex murmurs something she can’t make out, thumb brushing over the soft fabric of Lawrence’s onesie.

Lawrence settles, Alex doesn’t, and Rachel sighs and shifts over on the couch, says, “Come _ here,” _with twenty-eight years’ worth of exasperation. Alex scoffs and leans into her, his head heavy on her shoulder. Not completely settled, not with one ear perked up for the sound of the front door unlocking, but it’s the best she can do for him right now. 

She presses her nose into his hair and frowns at the smell. She sniffs again; he nudges her jaw with his head and makes a vaguely offended sound. “Okay, I get it. I’ll shower in the morning.”

“Are you wearing cologne?”

Alex stills. “What?”

She pulls her head back for a better look at the sweatshirt Alex is wearing -- oversized, fraying at the cuffs and neckline with faded letters coming unstuck from the fabric. Old, too old -- which makes it George’s. She stifles a sound at the back of her throat -- it might be a laugh. Best case scenario, it could be a laugh. _ “Alex.” _

“Stop it.”

“It looks older than you are.” She pauses. _ “Is it _older than you are?”

“Don’t do this to yourself.” 

Rachel rolls her eyes helplessly to the ceiling, sends up a silent prayer for strength_ . _“I’m going to kill him,” she says, resigned. “Lawrence will still have us and his inheritance, he’ll be fine.”

Alex snorts and adjusts his head on her shoulder. Rachel brushes the hair out of his face, then reaches to trace the curve of Lawrence’s head, curls kissing her fingertips. Alex makes a soft, disapproving noise, as if Rachel hasn’t learned how to handle a sleeping baby after all these years, but it trails off into nothing when Lawrence stays quiet.

After a while, Alex’s breathing slows, the tension in him ebbing, low tide-like. Rachel waits until he’s pressing most of his weight on her to take Lawrence -- Alex won’t drop him, no matter what she puts in his head to make him slow down, but he won’t drop off completely while he’s holding him, either.

Alex stirs, fingers twitching at the loss, and Lawrence whines. Rachel hushes them both and draws Lawrence into her arms. “I’ve got him,” she says, and Alex quiets completely.

Lawrence snuffles, squirms, and some old part of Rachel slits an eye open at the feeling. She lowers her head and presses her lips to his forehead -- warm, but not too much. She stays there, breathing in the smell of him, pressing her nose into the burst of curls, not unlike her own. For a while it’s their own warm little world, her hair spilling around him, over him. She can feel soft, small breaths puffing against her cheek, tickling the skin. 

Somewhere in her chest an old part of her settles, curls up warm behind her heart and learns to breathe again along with the rest of her. 

She straightens up eventually, the same crick from earlier threatening to work its way into her neck again if she’s not careful. She sinks back against the couch, careful not to jostle Alex. 

The ache lingers in her neck and she admits, not for the first time, that at some point between St. Croix and New York, between that little box of an apartment that was their first foothold in America and this place with a guest room bigger than that, she got old. The thought hasn’t sunk teeth into her, not fully, so she can’t say if it’s welcome or not. Her baby and his baby curled up warm against her, and Rachel doesn’t know if she wants to laugh or cry or find a quiet, dark place to rest her head until she grasps everything she has to hold. 

Lawrence’s foot twitches in his sleep, pushing against her ribs. Alex snuffles against her shoulder. Rachel rubs slow circles against her grandson’s back, and waits for his father to come home.

**Author's Note:**

> *Thanks for reading! Leave a kudos and comment if you liked it!  
*I'm on Tumblr at [icarusandtheson](https://icarusandtheson.tumblr.com/), come say hi!


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